Little Red Corvette - Human, All Too Human

I've given to calling our Little Red Corvette, "Pandora". 

 

My wife and I bought this beautiful car going on three years ago to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. I knew it was far from perfect when we got it - but what's an old car that's not a project? After three summers of non stop problems, I decided to not store it this winter so I could make much needed and time consuming repairs. My plan was to do mostly interior work with some rewiring of very fried, shorted out electricals. No sooner, though, had I finalized my plans than  Pandora's box opened.

 

The power steering  valve body, which was always leaking and is problematic on these 1968-1982 Corvettes, completely gave out late last summer. No problem since I was going to have the car all winter and I could make those repairs. I guess putting that vintage radio back in would have to wait. Then the rear brakes failed. Great.

 

It's been an interesting process researching and doing the work on this massive project. I now know more about "C3" Corvette brake systems (and Zora Duntov's unique independent suspension) than I ever thought I would. Lucky me. The work hasn't been easy but with a handy creeper, PB Blaster and the heavy duty mechanics overalls my wife bought me for Christmas it's been as smooth a process as it could be. I've finally gotten to the point where I'm putting the car back together. Or so I thought.

 

This past Sunday afternoon this hot bitch of a car kicked me in the nuts. Again. Perhaps it was naive of me to believe that I could just bolt up this new rear cross over brake line to the blocks and strap it down to the differential. Yeah. What I didn't anticipate was the exhaust system being in the way blocking this thing's path across the back of the car. I had broken up the old brake line when I was removing it. Just as well.

 

Now I have to drop at least one of these exhaust pipes to make way for the cross over brake line. Aye, Carumba. I think I'm just going to cut the brackets that hold these things up and replace them rather than risk breaking a hanger bolt off and having to rig a solution to something that appears to have been rigged in the first place. This exhaust system, as good as it sounds, looks like something someone paid very little for at a discount muffler shop on the bad side of town. 1975-1982 Corvettes did not come with "real" dual exhausts. A "y-pipe" split the exhaust out of one catalytic converter so it looked like these cars had duals when in fact it had one exhaust split.

 

One thing you hear little about with regards to the tale of Pandora's box; at the bottom of the box is hope.

In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878